Dragon Ball Super Episodes 112 – 118 Review

It’s becoming a tradition to quote myself from the last review and show how wrong I was, and this is no exception (and no, I’m not including the fact that I’ve ended up doing a batch of seven episodes rather than six, that was… actually avoidable, but it worked out better, so hooray!) So in the last batch I said I’d probably be talking about “six episodes focusing on the B-players again!”, but this turns out not to be the case, and in fact Goku ends up in a super-draining, multiple episode fight again, already!

Before we get to that though, there is Episode 112, which is mainly focused on Vegeta’s Universe 6 Saiyan student Cabba. The young Saiyan is failing to beat his enemy, and so his “sensei” basically tells him to stop being crap or he’ll beat the hell out of him, but then also states that when he wins the tournament, he’ll use the Super Dragon Balls to wish Cabba and his Saiyans back to life, which makes sense as I’m sure Vegeta would rather not lose a planet full of his own people again, even if it’s in another universe. As you’d imagine (given it would be pretty crap storytelling otherwise) Cabba gets inspired and eventually defeats his opponent with ease after achieving Super Saiyan 2. Sadly for him however, Frieza arrives and sees a good opportunity to beat up a Saiyan warrior again, just like the old days…

Also featured in the episode is Gohan and Piccolo ending up in a fight with two Universe 6 Namekians, showing that “our” universe’s twin has its own Namek, which makes sense as it has its own Saiyans and Earth as well. Goku, still recovering from his battle with Jiren, is saved by the super battle-hungry female Saiyan Caulifla, who wishes to fight Goku so she can get stronger (having learned Super Saiyan 2 from their last battle earlier in the tournament). This leads to a four-episode fight between Goku and the female Saiyan pair of Caulifla and Kale.

It’s a damn good fight too, you can say what you like about the plot or how the show plays about with established “canon”, but you can’t knock Dragon Ball Super’s fight scenes and their choreography. Caulifla and Kale double-team Goku, eventually forcing him to turn Super Saiyan 3, albeit briefly, giving Caulifla a goal to head towards, and then soon Kale feels all determined not to be a burden for her friend and turns into the female-Broly “Legendary Super Saiyan” form, but soon gains control over it (though she’s missing the white eyes, she still has green hair and crazy power …) The two work together to overpower Goku, until he uses his Super Saiyan Blue form, forcing the tables to turn and the two Saiyan women to be on the verge of elimination…

This is when they reveal that their God of Destruction, Champa, and their universe’s Supreme Kai created a plan to give Caulifla and Kale a pair of Portara earrings, which they then use to fuse together and become the super-powerful warrior “Kefla”. This new warrior proves too much for Goku, who is defeated even in his Super Saiyan Blue Kaio-Ken form. This then, believe it or not, triggers his new “Ultra Instinct” form again, not even 10 episodes since the form that would be “impossible to master” first appeared. This leads to a very satisfying finale to the four-part fight, and since I assume you don’t think Goku would be eliminated, the ending of which is pretty obvious…

So after the second Goku-focused epic in as many episodes we return to some other characters for the next two. In Episode 117 Androids 17 and 18 fight the magical girl parody duo of Rozie and Ribrianne, which is good for a laugh, and finally puts an end to the gag characters that admittedly stopped being funny a while ago… Also during this episode Vegeta allows himself to be punched in the face repeatedly by a weaker foe in the hopes it will unlock Ultra Instinct for himself, but soon just gets angry and punches the guy away (that scene made me laugh…)

Episode 118 sees Gohan and Piccolo’s fight with the Universe 6 Namekians (who by this point are the last hope for Universe 6) wrap up while simultaneously Goku and the two Androids finish off the last three members of Universe 2. The Namekians are interesting; they are so powerful because a whole bunch of Namekians fused with them (the same method Piccolo used to get stronger back in the Frieza arc when he fused with Nail) in order to help defend their universe, which makes sense and is a good twist. Also there is a scene where Piccolo is seemingly about to be killed (though given the ‘no death’ rule in the tournament, I guess he was about to be seriously hurt) by a large blast, only for Gohan to step in the way and block it, the angle used specifically calling back to Piccolo’s infamous sacrifice to save Gohan way back during the Saiyan arc of Dragon Ball Z. Episode 118 is another one of those brilliantly animated episodes you get from time to time, and the ending is really“shot” and pumped full of great music. You get a proper “rush” from the over-the-top action.

Given the title card that pops up at the start of the episode is called “Accelerated Tragedy, Vanishing Universes…” it can’t be a spoiler to say that Universes 2 and 6 lose their final fighters in this episode, and therefore find themselves wiped from existence. That’s two UNIVERSES worth of life wiped out in one episode. Good luck any show beating that death tally (though I still stand by my prediction that all this innocent life isn’t going to stay dead once the arc is done with…)

So there we are, seven more episodes into the Universe Survival Arc and we’ve had another fantastic fight, some more great callback scenes, fluid and excellent animation, and things are finally starting to come down to the wire, though there are still a lot of “our” universe fighters remaining, as well as several key threats (like Jiren) and a bunch of fodder. In a recent interview with the producers they let it slip that the arc is ending in March, so there is still quite a bit to go on this bizarre multi-versal extinction story! Basically, for wall-to-wall shonen action without having to worry about plot, you can’t get better than this.

Having watched anime since it was airing late night on the Sci-Fi channel in the late 90s, I consider myself... someone who's watched a lot of anime, and then got hired to write reviews about them. Hooray!

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